Nephelokokkygia

In the last weeks I was reading a bit about the two largest Magic: the Gathering tournaments in the history of that game.

• 2,227 players were playing on February 27th - 28th, 2010 in Madrid, Spain, and
• 1,931 players were playing on May 22nd - 23rd, 2010 in Washington, D.C.

And I was wondering how this number of player would affect the way VtES tournament would be run if (and that's the big if) VtES tournaments would be that large. Aside from the fact, that at VtES tournaments usually the organizers wait for any late attendants, that decklists are not mandatory, etc.

Of course, the whole tournament structure must be changed, you just cannot play 3 rounds + final, because for entering the final you would need something like 3 GW and 14 to 15 VPs, and even then the finalist's seating at the final table would be determined almost all the time by a coin flip. So making tiered, multi-day tournament would be mandatory. But with 2,000 players, you cannot cut down the field of players with just one cut-off, because going down from 2,000 players to let's say 100 (=5%) would also easily require some 3 GW. So my proposal (totally fictional of course) would be to make such a large tournament a 3-day event. First day would be a tournament with 3 to 4 rounds (no final) in order to cut down the number of players to 400 (20%). Then on the second day play another 3 to 4 rounds to reduce the number to 80 (20%). The last day of such a tournament would be the final tournament with 3 rounds + finals, almost as normal ..

On second thought, a Swiss-system tournament style (as bad as it may be for multiplayer game like VtES) over two days, followed by regular tournament with, let's say 40-60 players would also be possible, I guess.